Dynamical laser spike processing

Abstract

Novel materials and devices in photonics have the potential to revolutionize optical information processing, beyond conventional binary-logic approaches. Laser systems offer a rich repertoire of useful dynamical behaviors, including the excitable dynamics also found in the time-resolved "spiking" of neurons. Spiking reconciles the expressiveness and efficiency of analog processing with the robustness and scalability of digital processing. We demonstrate that graphene-coupled laser systems offer a unified low-level spike optical processing paradigm that goes well beyond previously studied laser dynamics. We show that this platform can simultaneously exhibit logic-level restoration, cascadability and input-output isolation---fundamental challenges in optical information processing. We also implement low-level spike-processing tasks that are critical for higher level processing: temporal pattern detection and stable recurrent memory. We study these properties in the context of a fiber laser system, but the addition of graphene leads to a number of advantages which stem from its unique properties, including high absorption and fast carrier relaxation. These could lead to significant speed and efficiency improvements in unconventional laser processing devices, and ongoing research on graphene microfabrication promises compatibility with integrated laser platforms.

13 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Graphene plasmonics
• Solitary and Coupled Semiconductor Ring Lasers as Optical Spiking Neurons

Cited by in corpus (19)

• Photonics for artificial intelligence and neuromorphic computing
• Neuromorphic Silicon Photonic Networks
• A silicon photonic modulator neuron
• Superconducting optoelectronic circuits for neuromorphic computing
• Neuromorphic computing using wavelength-division multiplexing
• Photonic spiking neural networks and CMOS-compatible graphene-on-silicon spiking neurons
• All-Optical Spiking Neuron Based On Passive Micro-Resonator
• An ITO Graphene hybrid integrated absorption modulator on Si-photonics for neuromorphic nonlinear activation
• Principles of Neuromorphic Photonics
• Refractory period of an excitable semiconductor laser with optical injection
• Equalization of pulse timings in an excitable microlaser system with delay
• Neuronal coupling benefits the encoding of weak periodic signals in symbolic spike patterns
• Excitability and memory in a time-delayed optoelectronic neuron
• Contemporary implementations of spiking bio-inspired neural networks
• All-Optical Excitable Spiking Laser Neuron in InP Generic Integration Technology
• Collective dynamics of evanescently coupled excitable lasers with saturable absorber
• An experimental demonstration of neuromorphic sensing of chemical species using electro-optical reservoir computing
• Improvement of image classification by multiple optical scattering
• A Comprehensive Survey on Nanophotonics Neural Networks